Has Blizzard surrendered to the powerful RMT lobby or are there other forces at work behind the company's recent decision to introduce a loophole that allows players to buy in-game gold and items with real-world currency? According to a recent post on World of Warcraft, the sale of the Guardian Cub is meant to test the waters of fighting rampant account compromises.

Blizzard claims that gold farming is actually not as common these days,
but instead most of the gold that is sold through third-party services
comes from stolen accounts. The idea of bypassing third-party gold
sellers by providing a cash shop pet that could be resold or traded in
game was meant to be a creative solution to the problem.

"Players can buy one for the purpose of trying to sell it in-game,
creating the potential for players to exchange real money for gold in a
way that does not lead to account compromises. Of course, all that comes
with the pretty important caveat that demand for the pet will be
finite, and there's no guarantee you'll be able to find a buyer,"
Blizzard writes.

The company says that it doesn't expect this will solve the overall
issue, the success or failure of the unique pet will help Blizzard
determine if this approach is worth pursuing further.

shu:personally i think blizzard is smart for doing rmt themselves instead of benefiting the account stealers and gold farmers,however i think this method is a bad idea for it only allow players to buy and not sell,thus creating a one side economy,they are better off following EVE system for rmt instead.or take more time to think of a better method ^^

can't they skip a few steps and make it so we can actually earn real money through trades so I can finally make a legit job out of playing my fav games XD

Snow wrote:

can't they skip a few steps and make it so we can actually earn real money through trades so I can finally make a legit job out of playing my fav games XD

Every gamer's wet dream ...2 bad it isnt going to come true in near future

That depends what you consider near future XD

I'm rather sure we ll see it in our lifetime, I'm not sure enough if I ll be able to pull off the needed gaming hours and effort by the time we ll see it though

Snow wrote:

can't they skip a few steps and make it so we can actually earn real money through trades so I can finally make a legit job out of playing my fav games XD

In Diablo 3 Blizz will allow a player to put items up on the RMT auction house for free for a limited number of times per week, at Blizzcon they stated that they want players to get a cash flow going through the RMT auction house without having to open their wallets, however there is still no word on what the weekly cap will be.

In a sense this is a step in that direction, and i like how they are putting a weekly cap in, that should keep people from trying to put up stupidly common items at high cash value, it'll make people actually think about those first few RMT slots per week and they'll actually wait to use them until they find items worth selling.

On the other hand, if you don't farm enough per week, you could waste those free sale slots, as this time around, really good and rare items will not be dropped off bosses necessarily, they want to eliminate the monotonous "boss runs" cycle that we saw in with Baal runs in Diablo 2, instead, a large majority of super rare items will drop off the rare and champion monsters that are found throughout the Diablo 3 world.

And to make things even more interesting, 70% of the games items drop outside of normal difficulty, so pre-nightmare farming for items to sell for money will undoubtedly be crafting mats at the very beginning when the game officially launches, as you can destroy all your crap items and turn them in to mats for your blacksmith to craft set items, epic and legendary items, which you can also put on the RMT auction house as well.

If any game is going to most likely set the standard for what a RMT in a MMORPG should play out, it'll be Diablo 3, and even that will be a balancing act.